Most devastating cyber attacks of 2016 that targeted Indian Banks

A very crucial and highly targeted sector by hackers is banking. Banks are the place where a country’s money lies. Almost all the banks going digital now a days, opened up a new threat to cyber world’s safety. If an attacker can get his hands on any banks e payment system he might receive good amount instead of just receiving data and information as like other attacks. This is the main reason behind attackers targeting banks.

In 2016, Indian banks had to face tough attacks on their digital security walls. 3 major cases of data breaches happened in 2016 and India which is dreaming to be cashless should work hard to strengthen their cyber security walls. Three of those major attacks we consider listing here.

Millions of Debit cards compromised

It is supposed to be one of the biggest ever breaches of financial data in India, as quoted by Economic Times , Over 3.2 Million Debit Cards were compromised. The breach is considered to have been originated in some systems in Hitachi Payment Services which enabled the cyber criminals to steal information which allowed them to steal funds. The infected cards were of Visa, Master Card and Rupay platform. The worst hit of the card issuing banks include State Bank of India, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, YES Bank.

As per Mint 90 Yes Bank ATMs and point of sale (PoS) terminals were targeted by malware, resulting in data of customers of banks including State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank Ltd, HDFC Bank Ltd and Yes Bank being stolen by hackers.

It was detected when Banks received multiple complaints from customers about cards being used in China at various ATMs and point of sale terminals. The malware was considered remained undetected for 6 weeks after which SBI decided to re-issue 600,000 debit cards and asked it’s customers to change PIN Numbers.

It is a time to re-iterate the guideline in cyber security, we should change our PIN Numbers and passwords time to time which prevent misuse.

Axis Bank survived an attack

India’s third largest private sector bank, Axis Bank, reported that it suffered a cyber attack where it’s authorities found an unauthorized login by some offshore hacker. The intrusion was reported by Russian security researcher Kaspersky Lab to the bank which later confirmed an intrusion in their system.

Despite the detected intrusion, the Bank did not find evidence that the hacker compromised other internal bank systems, or of attempts to make illegal transfers. It could have been the time where the Bank actually detected the intrusion while the hacker was in ‘”reconnaissance” stage.

Indian Bank Breached by Pakistani Hacker

A Pakistani hacker dubbed as ‘Afzal Faizal’ in the month of august has claimed to have gained access to a Nationalized Bank from India. Officials, however, claim that no financial loss or data leak took place. After the defacement, he also challenged Indian hackers to secure the Indian cyber space as he may target more such critical websites in the future.